Have you guys heard about Blue Apron? It's a pretty cool service that delivers pre-portioned ingredients and recipes to your home. Each week you receive a box of groceries with everything you need to make 3 delicious meals for 2 (or 4) people. I paid $59.94 for 1 week - which works out to $9.99 per meal, per person. Not bad considering these turned out to be super yummy, restaurant-quality meals. Plus, I usually ended up with enough leftovers for lunch the next day.

I was pretty impressed by the tastiness of the meals I whipped up, especially since my cooking skills are fairly remedial. I tried a bunch of new foods, and picked up a lot of different cooking techniques. It's more work than I care to handle every week, but you can cancel as often as you like. Once a month is ideal for me. My biggest concern is the amount of plastic packaging used for all the individual ingredients - supposedly it's all recyclable, but I hope Blue Apron will look into less wasteful packaging options for the future.

Overall, the concept is pretty mind-blowing to me, and it's especially helpful for busy New Yorkers - who know how grocery shopping in the city can be an epic task. I'm really bad at meal planning and grocery shopping, but Blue Apron makes it easy to cook new things. Want to know what I ate? Keep reading for the full scoop.

All the ingredients for 3 meals arrive in a big cardboard box.

It contains everything you need - from fresh produce and canned goods, to seasoning and garnishes.

The 1-page instruction sheet breaks the recipe down into simple steps, and the ingredient list with pictures makes it easy to identify new foods.

The hardest part is the chopping! Every recipe requires that you chop up about 5-7 different ingredients - no small task if you have sub-par knife skills like myself

The recipes have been really good so far, and introduced me to a bunch of different foods and flavors that I'd never even heard of - like kohlrabi, kumquats, and freekeh! They say each recipe takes about 35 min to prep, but honestly it was closer to 45 min to an hour for me. There was a lot of chopping, and it was pretty advanced for someone with limited cooking skills. I couldn't cook like this every week, but it's definitely super fun once in a while. Check out some of the dishes I prepared - I seriously can't believe I actually made these:

Pistachio-Crusted Catfish - I hardly ever cook fish, and it turned out so yummy.

Chicken Mulligatawny Soup - a unique flavor combination that I never would have thought to try.

The biggest downside is the wasteful plastic packaging. All the little sauces and side ingredients come individually wrapped. Still, it is all recyclable. You can see full recycling instructions here. Any rigid plastics (the little tubs and bottles) can be recycled with New York City plastics. However, you will need to take the plastic wraps and baggies to Whole Foods or another store that accepts plastic film for recycling. The cooling gel from the ice packs is non-toxic and can be rinsed down the drain. Check your local recycling rules for more info on what can be recycled and how.